Kid Version -- Picture Books Part II

Hi guys!

Have you ever made a book? Maybe your teacher asked you to in school, or maybe you just had a good idea for one and you did it on your own. Most people stop making books as they get older, but I never saw a good reason to stop, so I didn’t. And now, as you might know, I am in graduate school (where you go after college if you want to keep studying), learning about children’s books and about illustration.

This fall, I took a class all about illustrating books for children. It was so much fun! I wanted to share some of what I learned about what goes into making a picture book. This is the process that most illustrators use:

1.) We started with a written story. Some people chose a song or a well-known story like a fairy tale. Some people wrote their own stories. I wrote one about a boy in South Africa who discovers that painting with mud is lots of fun (imagine where I got that idea!).


2.) We divided the text so that it would spread across 32 pages. Did you know that most picture books are 32 pages long? That is because the printers that print the pages for books can do them in big sheets of 8 pages each. How many of these big sheets would be needed for a 32 page book?

Before I even thought about what pictures I wanted to draw,
I figured out what words would go on which page.

3.) We made a map of what our book would look like using tiny, simple pictures. This is called a storyboard. I tried several of them. The good thing about a storyboard is that you can see the whole book all at once.

In this storyboard, I was experimenting with a vertical book.

I decided I didn't like it as much as a horizontal one.



Here is the final storyboard that I turned in.

4.) We then made a practice book, called a dummy. This doesn’t mean it was made by dumb people. “Dummy” just means a substitute or a replacement. In this case, it is a substitute for the final book. The good thing about a dummy book is that you can tell what it will feel like to read the story with the text divided the way it is, and with the images the way they are. But the pictures are still simple enough that it’s not a big deal if you need to make changes. Illustrators often make many dummies to get the book looking just the way they want before they start the final art.

5.) Our teacher looked at our dummies and gave us suggestions or feedback. Most of the time, professional authors and illustrators will get this kind of advice from editors.

6.) We made the changes our teacher had suggested, and we got to work on the art for our final dummies. These are sample books that we could send to an editor to see if he or she wanted to publish it. We needed to make a book that had finished drawings (in black and white) and included three finished illustrations. The three finished illustrations would give anyone who looks at the book an idea of what the other drawings will look like when they are finished.

Now you might be thinking, “Sarah Jackson, why don’t illustrators just finish all the pictures in a dummy? After all, when my teacher tells me to do my homework, I have to do all of it.” Good question. There are two reasons why an illustrator might not send a completely finished book to an editor. The first is that she might not want to put all the effort and time into finishing the book until she knows it actually will be published. The second is that, as I mentioned earlier, part of an editor’s job is to make suggestions. They want to know that the illustrator is still open to changing her pictures. By having only a few finished illustrations in the dummy, an illustrator shows her ideas of what the book could look like, but also that the book is still in process, and so is open to change.

Here is an example of a black and white picture.

I painted it in ink because it is similar to mud in the kinds of textures it can create.
If the book were to be published, I would paint all of the pictures,
including this one, in mud.

Here is one of the finished illustrations. I painted it in mud
that I collected from lots of different places in South Africa.
The text reads: "The cows shuffled slowly through the tall, yellow grass. 'Uhsso, uhsso,' whispered the bushes as the herd went by."

"He tried painting on the cow."



"All day long, Sipho painted and painted. He stopped only
when the sky fell asleep and it was too dark to see."

7.) Our class ended with the final dummies, but the next step if we want to get our books published is to send our dummies to people who we think might want to help us publish our books. We could try sending them to editors, but most of the time, unless you’ve already had a book published, they won’t look at your work because they have too much to do. Another option is to try to get an agent, someone you pay to find a publisher for you. I haven’t done either of these things yet, but I will after I make some more changes to my final dummy.

So I get back to my first question: have you ever made a book? The steps I just described may sound difficult and complicated. They are. But you don’t have to go through all of them to make a good book. The most important thing in any picture book is to have a good idea. And I know from experience that you all have hundreds of good ideas every day! So why not put a few of them down on paper and make a book? And when you do, be sure to show me!

Have a good week,
Sarah Jackson

ps: I did some other work this fall and if you’re interested in seeing it, check out my website at www.clearasmudillustration.com.

Children's Books -- Part 1

Hi Everyone,

A while ago, I came across a quote that connects a lot of the things I am most interested in. Picture book author and illustrator Karla Kuskin said, “There are great advantages to being a stranger because as a stranger you pay attention to everything, and that’s what children do. And that is also what you want to do as a writer or as an artist drawing: to see what is different and what is important.” Kuskin connects being in a new place to being a child. Often what is old hat to an adult is a fascinating adventure to a child. Going to the post office is as interesting as going to Timbuktu. Tying your shoe for the first time is as much a triumph as slaying a dragon or climbing Everest.

The Calvinist preacher Jonathan Edwards wrote in his journals, “the world exists anew every moment . . . we every moment see the same proof of a God as we should have seen if we had seen Him create the world at first.” If we are to remain childlike -- an essential characteristic if you are wanting to write and illustrate for children -- we need to ensure that we continue to see the world as Edwards described, as perpetually and wonderfully new.

This is one of the main reasons why I love picture books for children. Though not aware of it, child readers demand an equal balance between consistency and surprise. Without some stability in a story, the setting, characters and plot would be not only unbelievable, but incomprehensible. If an astronaut on the moon on page twelve turns into a teacher in a classroom on page thirteen with no explanation, the reader will be as lost as the characters. Furthermore, patterns and repetition play a huge role in learning to read, and being aware of this as an author or illustrator can enhance the book as a learning tool.

And yet if there weren’t new developments on every page, you wouldn’t have a story, you’d have a series of photocopies. And it’s the delicate dance between consistency and surprise that produces the best parts of picture books, whether verbally or visually. In the following sequence, the break in the pattern has punch only because the pattern is there in the first place:

On Monday, Jacob danced with the dog.
On Tuesday, he danced with the cat.
On Wednesday, he danced with the rabbit.
On Thursday, he danced with the goat.
On Friday, the llama danced with Jacob.

Without the first four sentences, the llama dancing with Jacob would not be as interesting because we wouldn’t have the back-story, as it were. However, without the last sentence, the story would be too flat, a joke without a punchline.

In my art criticism class this term, we had a discussion about Activist Art, art that attempts to change some aspect or viewpoint in society, be it patriarchal assumptions about the role of women or the stigma of AIDS. We noted how Activist Art often relies heavily on specific cultural vocabularies, using symbols, words and ideas that are well known to people of a certain culture.

"Health Coverage" (2008) -- Luba Lukova

For example, Luba Lukova’s image about the health care system depends on our familiarity with the image of an umbrella and with the caduceus, the symbol for medicine (though traditionally, the rod of Asclepius, with one snake and no wings, represented medicine, while the caduceus represented commerce, among other concepts). In capitalizing on these communal symbols, the art is often considered more “democratic” because it is accessible to a wide variety of people. Activist Art can lose some of the subtlety found in other kinds of art, however, and some people criticize it, saying that it deserves a quick read only, and nothing more. Other kinds of fine art, on the other hand, and painting in particular, can sometimes seem exclusive because artists often use their own private vocabularies initially unknown to the viewer.

"The Persistence of Memory" (1931) -- Salvador Dali

For example, the ants we can see in the lower left corner of this Salvador Dali piece represent decay and rot, which we know because he has established this as a personal symbol in the context of his other work. Apart from its sheer aesthetic value, Dali’s work is full of layers and hidden meanings, and as such, merits a more sustained viewing than, say, a poster protesting cutbacks in government services.

Is there a middle ground between accessible and understandable work on the one hand and work that has a richness in the visual vocabulary it employs? Of course. And one solution to this dichotomy comes in the form of picture books precisely because of the relationship between pattern and variation, between consistency and surprise. Picture books are essentially tiny worlds, usually created in a mere 32 pages. The author and illustrator must establish their own system of symbols and rules for their world. At first, it is unfamiliar to the readers, as strange as traveling to a foreign country; initially, picture books are like Dali’s painting. However, the author and illustrator are responsible for teaching the reader these symbols and rules. They not only create the world, they guide us through it. Because picture books are comprised of a series of words and images, we grow accustomed to the books’ individual vocabularies as we read. By the time we close a picture book, we should be naturalized citizens of the world it contains.

If, as Edwards wrote, the world really is created anew every moment, it could follow that there are an infinite number of worlds. This is a thrilling prospect, and I’m not yet sure what I think about it. At any rate, a picture book is a chance to enter into one moment’s world, to get to know its inhabitants and its culture, and to leave better able to distinguish “what is different and what is important.”

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Amazing Things

Hi Everyone,

When I was in Lacoste, I took a bookmaking class. We made several small books to practice binding techniques, and I wanted to find the best use for them. They were too small for my normal journaling or sketching habits, but I didn’t want them to sit around being cute but empty (I feel the same way about books as I do about people).

At the time, there were several frustrating scenarios that I was dealing with and it was easy to get bogged down with them. But I didn’t want my time in Lacoste to be wasted: I was doing art in the south of France in the springtime and that was AMAZING. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was experiencing tons of amazing things everyday. In the end, I decided to use my journals to write down one amazing thing -- the most amazing thing -- that happened each day. I found that doing this made me more open to remarkable occurrences and that ending the day with a specific example of something truly wonderful caused any frustrations I had to take a backseat.

My two most recent Amazing Journals

Here are some of the most interesting entries from my Amazing Journal from the last few months:


August 3: Today I hit Matthew in the arm with a bag of tortillas. It was so much fun I did it again to his other arm.

August 20: Today, Judi and I were unpacking some pedestals for the gallery and they came with ziplock baggies which each had five binder clips, one screw and a Jolly Rancher.

August 25: Today, about 30 minutes outside of Wenatchee, our bus got pulled over. After a few minutes, the driver got on and asked if a Mackenzie so-and-so was on board. No one answered, so he said everyone who had gotten on in Wenatchee had to raise their hands because there were two extra passengers. Two girls got up and went up to the cop who had boarded the bus by this point. He took them away.

August 27: Today Katie Stout told us that she knows someone whose friend got to choose her name when she was six. She chose “Beanbag.”

August 30: Today Elizabeth told me that her husband, who is in the Coast Guard and is learning to deep sea dive, is in charge of buoy tenders, the boats that maintain the buoys along the coast (among other tasks). I’d always wondered who did that!

September 2: Today I learned that James and the Giant Peach is on the list of banned books. What on earth for? How could you get offended by a fictional giant fruit?

September 3: Today I learned that while in remote Indonesia, Luca found a bunch of WSU sweatshirts. What?!

September 4: Today, while Krisi and I were walking, I found a tiny snake (about 2.5 inches long). Its front half was black and yellow and its tail was baboon-bum blue. It really looked like it was two different snakes fused together.

September 5: Today in Home Depot, Matthew and I stumbled across two employees cutting a gigantic onion with a pair of oversized shears.

September 7: Today, as Becky was driving me back from the airport, there was a road sign (lit in red letters) that said “September is preparedness month. Plan ahead and be prepared.”

September 16: Today Jonathan Mayer told me that NASA spent millions of dollars trying to develop a toilet that would work in zero gravity. The problem was that it had spinning blades (to prevent poo from getting loose) so nobody wanted to use it. It turned out that the astronauts were just wearing diapers.

September 18: Today two Christians accosted me in Forsyth and asked to do a video interview of me. They asked me 1.) “Do you think you could love someone unconditionally?” 2.) “How are you prepared for the Day of Judgment?” and 3.) “Do you have any siblings?” They then told me that a huge group of people in the park were doing a Nordic dance. Upon further investigation, I realized that they were essentially jazzercising to Christian music.

September 24: Today I learned that the average college-educated native English speaker has a conversational vocabulary of about 30,000 words. Level 2 students in ESL have 2,000-4,000. Wow.

October 1: Today Cindy told me about how when she asked her nephew what he wanted her to draw if she could draw anything for him, he said without any hesitation, “God’s thumb.”

October 9: Today I learned that SCAD has an intramural Quidditch team.

October 17: Today Becky told me that when she was little, her family found orphan guinea pigs in a dumpster in Canada and they smuggled them across the border by having her grandfather keep them tucked in his shirt.

October 18: Today as I was walking back from Kroger, the bag I was carrying kept catching the breeze in just the right way so that the little plastic flaps kept making kazoo noises.

October 21: Today I learned that Professor Drummond was taught by Quentin Blake!

October 24: Today in church, one of the hymns we sang was written by someone named Augustus Montague Toplady.

Have a good and amazing week! Happy Halloween!

Sarah/Mouse

ps: I discovered a great website this week that gives a “Wonder of the Day.” Each day, a different question is posed along with an accompanying YouTube video, an explanation of the answer and activities that kids can do to further investigate the topic. The website is intended to promote curiosity and learning between parents and children, but it’s also pretty interesting for those of us who don’t fit in those categories. The website is: http://wonderopolis.org/.

Artistic Modesty

Hello Everyone,

This week, I turned in an assignment for my Illustration Markets class which I loved doing. A year or so ago, our professor created all the illustrations for an issue of a magazine called In Character. Each issue highlighted a different virtue, everything from thrift to loyalty to forgiveness. We were instructed to choose a volume that we resonated with, re-illustrate the cover and do two inside “spot” illustrations. I chose modesty because I have been thinking about it a lot in the last few years, especially since coming to SCAD.

Modesty (and its younger sister, humility) is something I hear about all the time in a religious context, but rarely in an artistic one. And when I do, it’s always negative. “You have to have an ego,” our professors tell us. “You have to be able to sell yourselves or you won’t make it as professional artists.” Modesty, in other words, is fine for people who have a “normal” profession with job security and health benefits. Us artists? We can’t afford it.

Every fiber of my being refuses to believe this. I think it’s not only unnecessary but actually detrimental to separate my religious beliefs from my artistic ones; surely it is possible to be humble and creative at the same time. So when I got a chance to do an entire project dedicated to the concept of modesty, I leapt at it. And when I saw that this issue included an article called, “Can Artists Ever Truly Be Modest?” by Eric Gibson, the editor of the Leisure and Arts page of the Wall Street Journal, I leapt again, this time literally.

Gibson highlights several reasons why artists generally aren’t modest. For one thing, as he says, “Artists are in the business of drawing attention to themselves” and, I would add, to their work. This is partly for reasons of patronage and financial survival, but also because you have to be confident enough in your work that you think it’s worth seeing. In general, an artwork isn’t truly complete until it has been viewed by someone. (If a painting is done in the woods and no one is there to see it, is it still art?) Also, art almost always deals with the human experience. My professor said of this particular project that “it’s all about us” as people. But it could be equally said of all art anywhere; we are inspired by events, emotions, scenes, objects, actions that involve us. How narcissistic! Furthermore, making a work of art is inherently tied up with identity. We sign our work. We paint self portraits. There is a sense that when we paint a picture, part of us is represented on the page. When I look at pictures by Henri Matisse or Jackson Pollock or Eric Carle, I feel like I know their makers. This makes sense religiously too: looking at Creation is a way of knowing the Creator.

It seems like making art is destined to be wrapped up in ego and self-promotion, and this is dismaying. How do I deal with moments in the artistic process that tempt my pride: professors telling us we need to be confident and sell ourselves; people complimenting me on my work; the occasional dreams I have of winning the Caldecott? Assuming that false modesty is really just a more sneaky form of pride, how do I respond? Of course, humility is the trickiest virtue to cultivate because if you recognize any progress in yourself, it almost always turns instantly to pride at your accomplishment. One step forward, two steps back.

Fortunately Gibson concludes that, though rare, it is actually possible for artists to be modest, and that perhaps they have a modesty unique to their profession. He describes the humility artists have when they recognize the artists who have come before them, when they acknowledge that they create within a larger context. He talks about artists being daunted by the immensity of the work ahead of them. At one point, he even quotes Michelangelo saying, “I am not . . . a painter” as he was working on the Sistine Chapel. Often, artists can feel that their art is bigger or beyond themselves, that they can get lost in their work. Gibson discusses artists sacrificing themselves for their work (and though he doesn’t mention them, there are clear Biblical parallels here too).

I would add several reasons to Gibson’s observations. Artists working in any kind of a community, be it a class or a company, must continually hear and hopefully incorporate advice from others. This is particularly true in Illustration, where an art director or an editor can manage your project until the final publication. Cooperation fosters humility when it reminds us that our methods and opinions are only one possible approach.

Mostly, I think that artists can be modest when they recognize that everything they have, be it talent, training or opportunities, comes from someone or somewhere else. After honesty, I think thankfulness is the biggest contributor to humility. And very occasionally, in our best work, there is a sense of awe. Every so often, I look at a picture I’ve made and think, “Wow! That’s good! I wonder how I did that.” It sounds prideful, but I think it’s actually the point in the artistic process when artists can be most modest. I’m always pleasantly surprised when I remember I was somehow connected with making the work in front of me. And it is that surprise that reminds me that I’m not completely in control as I create. And that is terrifying, amazing and relieving. It is, in other words, humbling.

And we’re back to the infuriating thing about modesty: here I am, telling you how humble I am as I make art, the iteration of which isn’t exactly modest. But as I get caught in moral eddies, I am aware of the impending deadline -- my assignment needs to be completed, not just thought to death. And again, I find that art (like children, stories, nature, and good friends) takes me out of myself long enough for me to forget the whole debate and actually make something.

Here are the results of this assignment:

The cover: My friend Erin suggested doing a peacock precisely because they are known for their vanity. I thought it would be a striking image for a cover, and it would be fun to have the peacock with a sort of fan in front of his eyes.





For the first "spot" illustration, I wanted to show an artist locating herself in history and yet still making a distinct impression: "It is here, in relation to the past and their sense of their place in the history of art, that artists exhibit modesty in the truest sense of the term."






For the second "spot" illustration, I decided to do an image for an article about how scientists won't ever be able to know everything about the world: "From time to time, when we catch glimpses of the unknown, we feel a sense of pride and satisfaction in learning something that no human has ever known before -- but we are equally humbled by how much we don't know."

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

ps: If you’re interested in reading Gibson’s article, or any others from In Character, you can access the full text online at http://incharacter.org/archives/. I find this a very thought-provoking publication.

Website!

I recently got a website to display my art. You can find it at here or by clicking the blue link to the left. I'd love any feedback you may have.

Enjoy!

Catch Up -- Back in Savannah

Hello Everyone,

I have just finished up the fourth week of class in my second year at SCAD, and it’s hard to believe that I’m already two fifths of the way through the quarter. Things have been busy, as usual, and I’m sorry I haven’t been more consistent about writing. (I know I owe many of you individual emails.) It’s definitely not because of a lack of things to write about. There have been several significant changes to my experience at SCAD this year, and I want to take a minute to catch you up with them.

Most significantly, I have moved into an apartment. It’s close to the Illustration building, and it’s on one of the lovely downtown streets of Savannah. The apartment was pretty disgusting when we moved in (we suspect that the previous tenants not only didn’t clean once during their stay here -- they actually sprinkled dust and dirt in every possible nook as part of some sacred ritual we haven’t yet figured out). We spent the first few days scrubbing every surface we could find, including our walls.

Meanwhile, we needed furniture. I had many Craigslist encounters, some more rewarding than others. We rented a U-Haul truck which I drove around Chatham County successfully after an initial stressful moment when I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t keep from reversing. I eventually determined that I actually needed to turn the engine on. Imagine that! And people say automatics are easier than manuals! By the end of the day, I was even able to park without leaving six feet between the curb and the front of the truck. Slowly, we gathered pieces of furniture and managed to haul them up two flights of steep stairs. We are settled in quite nicely now, and aside from the occasional cockroach slaying, are finding the place peaceful and comfortable.

The best part of the apartment is that I get my own room but also have great housemates. In my room, there’s lots of light and I’ve managed to hang up all of my South African mud with clothes pins.

Some of my South African mud.

I have my art supplies organized with a whole drawer dedicated to adhesives. Mostly, I’m loving having my own space.

My bedroom, which has a nice little nook with a window which lets in a lot of light.

I’m living with my friend Qian, who lived in the same suite as me last year. She’s a Graphic Design major from Shanghai and is hilarious. She is incredibly talented and often gives me good advice about my work. I’m really enjoying living with her again. My other housemate, Becky, is, believe it or not, also from Spokane. And, believe it or not, her parents work at Whitworth. And, believe it or not, her grandmother was my mentor in high school. And, believe it or not, we live five minutes away from each other. And we hadn’t met until this summer! Becky had been teaching art in China for four years and decided to go to grad school in art. We emailed for a while and I was very excited when she decided on getting an MFA in Illustration at SCAD. We decided to live together and she and Qian have been chatting in Chinese and comparing cooking tips. Becky and I have been having lots of fun realizing how similar our childhoods were (NPR shows featuring prominently, our fathers talking about being “good stewards of time,” enjoying frozen yogurt at Didier’s, etc.). We laugh together a lot and in my opinion, at least, that’s the main requirement for a good home.

Becky, Qian and me at Becky's birthday dinner.

Over the summer, I was becoming wary of coming back to SCAD for a few reasons. For one, it seemed like I was quite adrift in many of my classes -- there wasn’t a whole lot of cohesion to my work, largely because the professors were stretching us in divergent directions with different projects. But it’s different this term, due to an increased flexibility on the part of a the professors and an increased confidence on my part. I feel like I’m finally doing what I want to be doing the way I want to be doing it. This is exciting. My studio classes are Illustration Markets (where we explore the various markets available to us as illustrators) and Children’s Book. Both professors are encouraging me to continue using mud, for which I’m grateful.

I was also wary because I felt like art school seemed so insular. It seemed like very few people (apart from my closest friends) wanted to talk about the outside world. It seemed narcissistic and lazy. It was hard being in South Africa this summer, where I got to revisit the places I’d worked in 2008 and where I’d felt relevant and at least mildly helpful. Grad school provides a rather luxurious and closed environment in general, and the nature of art school only exacerbates this. Several things have made it better this year, though. For one thing, it helps to be living with Qian and Becky. I think about half our sentences begin with, “In China . . . ” or “In South Africa . . . ” We’re constantly reminding ourselves that there is a world outside of downtown Savannah. Also, the professor of my other class, Art Criticism, takes a global view of art history which is essential and unfortunately rare. We’re required to subscribe to the New York Times, and she has an entire class period devoted to art criticism in Africa! I am continuing to tutor ESL students which brings me in touch with a number of people from all over the world. So although I’m back in the SCAD bubble, it doesn’t feel nearly as stifling as I’d feared it might.

And there are great benefits to being in art school which I’m remembering. Aside from seeing my friends again, my favorite part about being back how naturally quirky everyone and everything here is. It’s good to be back in the land of lectures with titles like, “Is There Any Depth in Flatness?” It’s great to get emails from friends with advice about the best glue to use in various situations. In class the other day, one of my friends was looking at our peer’s work on the wall. He sat there holding his hand up in front of his face for about twenty seconds until the professor said, “What are you thinking?” It’s good to be in a place where what might look like insanity to others is actually a sign of thinking. For my friend’s independent project, she is crocheting images of punk rockers. I’m still where I need to be, and that’s also exciting.

I hope you are all well, wherever you are.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Wedding

Hello Everyone,

Almost a month ago, I got to be in my friend Pooja’s wedding. She and I were roommates our freshman at the University of Puget Sound, and she’s been one of my very favorite people ever since.

Pictures outside the EMP in Seattle.

We all wore red shoes!

The bridesmaids and Pooja at the wedding site:
Alki Beach, overlooking the Seattle skyline.

Pooja and me right before the ceremony.

Pooja’s family is Indian and her husband, John, is not. For their ceremony and reception, Pooja and John decided to blend their respective cultural traditions so that each would be represented.

Pooja, sandwiched between her aunt and her mother.

Pooja, dressed in a stunning red sari and gold jewelry, walked down the aisle, escorted by her brother. John’s grandfather said a few words and later, after they exchanged rings, he pronounced them married and encouraged the two of them to kiss.

Of course, the most interesting elements of the ceremony for me were the ones I wasn’t familiar with. A family friend acted as the acharya or spiritual leader for the ceremony and since Pooja doesn’t know Sanskrit, he performed the Vedic ceremony in English. This allowed the rest of us to understand what was going on. Pooja’s parents began this portion of the ceremony by tying part of her and John’s clothing together. Literally tying the knot emphasized the union of my friends. They were no longer simply John and Pooja but PoojaJohn. They were one unit and had to walk together as they performed saptapadi, the next element of the Hindu ceremony. Pooja’s brother placed seven leaves on the ground, and as PoojaJohn stepped on each one, they recited a different vow. They promised to be faithful to each other, they vowed to care for any children they may have, and they prayed for a long and happy life together.

I found the Vedic ceremony complemented the western one very well. Either one on its own would have seemed incomplete in the circumstances. And that’s exactly what was happening -- two cultures were coming together. There is a plethora of movies that delight in exaggerating the tension and misunderstandings at cross-cultural weddings (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Birdcage). But part of why these films resonate with us so much is that they are an extension of the truth about any marriage -- all marriages are intercultural for the simple fact that any person comes from a series of subcultures, the strongest being his or her family’s. Often, up until the wedding, the bride and groom have been lone ambassadors for their respective families. Finally, at the wedding, a rather eclectic smattering from one clan is sent as a delegation to meet the equally random grouping of the other. No wonder things can get challenging!

To a bride’s family, the groom’s relations might as well be roasting a lamb on a spit in the front yard. His family, on the other hand, might be raising their eyebrows at her parents’ choice of wardrobe for the rehearsal dinner.
They’re spending how much on that bottle of wine?
I hope he’ll be wearing something a bit more formal to the reception.
We’d never survive in their house! We’re all allergic!
Did her aunt really just call Reagan a chimp?

Of course, the way we are raised never fully leaves us, and the different assumptions and preferences we have show up in high relief when paired against another person’s over an extended period of time. Our cultures coming together can make or break us; we can either recognize the strengths in each and survive on a healthy diet of compromise, or we can let them dislodge us like a tree imperceptibly but permanently uprooting the ground around its base.

The very obviousness of John and Pooja’s cultural differences encourages me. They, along with all of us present at the ceremony, are fully aware that they come from different backgrounds. In bringing together their respective cultures at their wedding, they set a precedent for their marriage; weddings are giant collaborations because marriages are giant collaborations.

In the last few weeks, I have been so sad to read about the building tensions between Muslims and Christians over the proposal to build a mosque at Ground Zero and the subsequent threats to burn the Koran. Perhaps some people are too deeply entrenched in ideology to benefit from the resulting discourse occurring between Muslim and Christian leaders around the country and the world. But I hope that the rest of us remember Pooja, John, and all couples who promise to try more often than not and to find beauty in each other’s differences. I hope we can remember that like it or not, we are tied to our neighbors, and we dare not take a step without them.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

Congratulations, PoojaJohn!